the appetizer:

Some Western culinary influences in Japan, including Portugal (tempura) and the Americas (teppanyaki), have been so integrated into Japanese cooking, it is difficult to differentiate them from more traditional Japanese cuisine like sushi and kaiseki. Standard Japanese meals usually include rice, soup, pickles and an entree, like fish or vegetables.

Japan

Zen & the Art of Eating

Delving into an explanation of how food is perceived in Japan is like trying to capture sand in a wave. Each grain is part of a larger motion. Capturing the sand grain by grain is pointless. To capture the sand, you must capture the wave.

In other words, to understand what eating in Japan is all about, you must understand what the Japanese are about—how they think, what they value. In this section, we can only attempt to scratch the surface of these topics, which are exceedingly complex in their elegance and simplicity.